Take the quiz to get the files ...

This is actually pretty amusing: Inside Higher Ed is reporting that the Missouri University of Science and Technology has instituted a novel approach against P2P file swapping. Students that want access to P2P networks have to take an online quiz about copyright first. Answer the randomly selected questions right, and you'll get six hours of P2P access. From the article:

"When students pass the quiz, P2P access is granted within 10 seconds for use by any program, whether it’s a game or software program that needs to download an update, LimeWire, BitTorrent or another program. From that point on, there’s no way for the university to monitor whether users’ file-sharing activity is legal — but, on the other hand, there’s also no way for them to claim ignorance."

The downside is that even copyright experts can only get a total of eight P2P sessions per month, meaning that they won't be able to use BitTorrent for longer than 48 hours per month. Of course that doesn't really matter once you're in a dorm and able to pool your resources - after all, gambling taking part in a multiple-choice copyright enforcement effort is much more fun if you do it with friends.